Will Krause

Someday many years from now, my grandkids will ask me “Grandpa, were you ever a television robot star?” And I will be able to honestly tell them “Yes children, I was an EVIL television robot star.

I built this robot out of all sorts of odds-and-ends. A funnel, bucket, two mini plasma spheres to make a head, and two wheelbarrows to make a body. The legs are made from wiggle board and plywood, and then I attached a bunch of wires and junk circuit boards… with plenty of silver paint to make things look futuristic.

Courtland Premo made a remote control base for the robot by dissecting a remote-control golf bag carrier.

It gets very hot in a robot costume!

I built this machine to sequentially shoot a contestant in the toes with rubber bands.

The mechanism works with screws which are placed around the barrel of a crank-operated winch every few degrees. As the crank is turned, the rubber bands fire off one-by-one.

I built this five-passenger bike by cutting apart and welding together the parts from three tandem bikes, and adding a bit of black gas piping where I needed straight tubing. It actually worked too, and I was able to take it for some wobbly rides in the studio! (Though the rear seat was responsible for shifting gears, since my cables weren’t long enough.)

Inflatable hot water bottles were added to make exploding seats (by Jason Singleton and Jessie Voris, I think)

The second in a series of swingsets that made me feel bad!

I created a swing out of heavy black rubber to hold a contestant so that their knees would graze against a carpet as they swung, getting a nasty case of rugburn in the process.

Sorry, contestant!

This challenge almost made me puke.

I made a welded steel mechanism that swung three flounders into the face of a contestant as they played on a swingset. The fish are all put in motion by a pneumatic cylinder that rotates the fish in the opposite direction from the contestant.

My stomach was churning as I tried to zip-tie the flounders in place, but Katie Akana not only bravely attached the fish for me – she also broke out a big bucket of slime to make the fish extra revolting.

I cast these rubber hands and built them to pinch a contestant’s cheeks. A spring-powered clamp was modified to make the fingers pinch. Jason Singleton built the motors which moved the hands from side-to-side.

I built this ATM machine with help from Daniel Rasa. The shell of the machine is made out of MDF and plywood, and acrylic components were added for lighted signs and to simulate buttons.

It re-uses the mechanism from the groin-punching slot machine that I’d built earlier, only with a new cast silicone hand that held a fistful of phony money. Courtland Premo programmed a LCD photo frame to act as an ATM screen for the stunt.

This was a simple modification that only took a few hours to complete – an elliptical trainer that I welded arms onto, so that it could punch a contestant alternately in the stomach and groin.

I welded together a pair of steel hands to squeeze contestants’ behinds. The hands were pulled shut by bicycle brake cables which were tightened by spinning a crank. I covered the hands with liquid latex coated foam. The arms wear sleeves stitched together by Jessie Voris, and the lower support was re-used from a catapult built by Courtland Premo.

This machine was built to give five contestants a wedgie… SIMULTANEOUSLY! I welded together the steel pipe and I-beam frame and hooked up two 12v electric winches to a bar, which in turn was connected to the contestants specially grommeted underpants (by official Silent Library grommeter Jessie Voris.) Courtland Premo figured out a way to operate the winches with a remote control and a small 12v battery.